Of bananas and me

There is something about the banana/pazham that is so appealing. Maybe its the colour, or the smell or the fact that if you put out your foot out in all likelihood you would stumble on the million zillion ways we Malayalees use the vazha. When it literally rains bananas you cannot help loving them. I adore the poovans and the all other varities of small bananas. I dont care much for the big nendra pazham but drool over pazha baji and pazham and pappadam. The cousin of the banana called "chiquita" here was my only link to the bananas back home. They were not great, but they werent bad either. But one day Chiquita and I had a quarrel and this is how it started.

I was standing on a ferry, looking out into the ocean and warming my hands already numb with cold when I happened to hear a seemingly innocent conversation. A couple of guys and girls were talking 

Guy1 - I am hungry...

Guy2 - yeah, I could eat anything... I think maybe I have a banana in my bag.

Girl 1 - A banana?? yuck!

Guy1 - Why? dont you like bananas?

Girl 2 - No I dont, I cant stand their smell. Horrible...!

At this point I look around to see that the girl has covered her nose up with her stole and is vigorously shaking her head in disgust over the smell of the imagined banana.

The conversation continues branching off into banana world -

Guy1 - So what about banana bread? 

Guy2 - There must be tons of stuff with bananas in them. Do you mean to say that you dont like any of them?? 

Girl - I am fine with banana bread and all the other stuff with bananas in them. Its just that I don't like to eat a banana on its own. It makes me wanna puke.

Guy1 - So what if your boyfriend had a banana and then he kissed you? 

Girl - I probably wouldn't kiss him!

They exhausted their topic and they moved off. Outwardly nothing had changed but I was never the same again. From that moment on I was not able to eat a banana. Every week Reni regularly tried to convince me to share half of a ripened banana with him. Yet how much ever he tried to coax me I couldn't bring myself to eat one. Everytime I thought of a banana, the image of that girl with her nose all covered up would come into my mind and however hungry I was, my hands never reached out for the banana.

What bothered me the most about this was that I was so easily influenced. Someone just had to vividly describe why she didn't like banana and I was conquered! At first I thought maybe time would help me forget, but some memories cling to you like glue. I was angry at myself for being such a walk over but the damage could not be undone. Lately I have begun to think that all through time, there have been several instances of people being easily influenced by personalities like Hitler and Osama and they have resulted in world wars! I merely stopped eating bananas, no major world history changing event. 

A couple of weeks back during his routinely cry for help to finish off an over ripe banana, I relented to Reni's coaxing and ate half. I neither liked the smell nor the taste and I gulped it down quickly and painfully.

 

But hold on, there is a happy ending to this story. Unknown to me, there was a plantain in the fridge which was once green but had since then become a brownish yellow. Unwilling to throw it away, I peeled it and immediately stood arrested by the familiar nendhra pazham smell. Old taste buds watered in delight and forgetting everything else I made finger licking pazha bajji that day which tasted remotely like the ones back home.

So now I spend my time between prowling for the exact brownish blackish plantain and waiting for that day when a banana crusader whispers in my ear on how delightful bananas are so that I can start eating them again.